


Power

by Natasi (SwordDraconis113)



Category: Lost Girl
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Child Abuse, F/F, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Sexual Slavery, mentions of:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 03:36:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1289734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwordDraconis113/pseuds/Natasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lauren believed that power was like God. As long as people believed it was there, who was to say it wasn’t? </p><p>Belief, after all, was a powerful thing. And power was something to believe in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Power

**Author's Note:**

> "Power comes from below; that is, there is no binary and all-encompassing opposition between rulers and ruled at the root of power relations."

Power was an interesting concept. She and Evony had discussed it in length one drunken evening on her couch. Lauren believed that power was like God. As long as people believed it was there, who was to say it wasn’t? 

Belief, after all, was a powerful thing. And power was something to believe in. 

Evony disagreed, only on the basis that power was held in those who were above. Yes, Julius Caesar fell, Rome fell, Kings are killed and president’s are assassinated, but oppressors hold power over the oppressed even after the oppressed know their equality. Why else did World War II happen? 

She didn’t always believe it was this way. 

In truth, Lauren had once felt empowered with her brother. Where he was physically better than her in all aspects, she was smarter. Power to her, then, had been force: resistance. Fighting for a cause. 

She believed then that all people held some strings of power. And like the building blocks of life, the elements and stardust we are all made from, by using the given structure carefully you could create something larger. An explosion of chain reactions. To her, then, power wasn’t something just given or handed over, it was something learned. 

But that had been her brother’s influence. 

He had told her, that by making pipe bombs, she could make her voice project across newspapers, television and even in gossip of other people’s words, all of which would be done without her face, without _her_ having to stand up and face her adversaries head on. She didn’t have to throw a single punch, that was for him. She just had to make his punch strong enough. 

In a way, she prefers it like that. She was never fast enough to dodge. Never strong enough to hit. Nor was she able to argue her way out of any situation, even as a child her brother could manipulate their parents into believing the stolen cookie was _her_ fault as his crumbed-speckled face held the evidence. 

And maybe it was. If so, then eleven people’s deaths were her fault too. She made the weapon, she handed it over. Every action thereafter belonged to her because it was _her_ bomb. 

With the deaths, interpol, power became something frightening, chaotic and out of control. Her hands had shook, skin cold, waxen like she had died with them. Terrified, she allowed power to melt from her as Karen to become Lauren. 

The army became different. She kept her head down, but leadership required her skill, herself to be forged in a particular way to survive. Voices; yelling, screaming over deafening sounds whether gunfire or helicopters, needed to made with her chin thrusted up. Power then had been forced into her hands as her squad leader died, bleeding out onto her uniform. 

They had a war artist, a photographer to keep safe. She was a woman who spoke arabic far better than they did and had a wicked tongue that taught Lauren how to blush. Nadia had been the only other woman there, but the men kept them both safe. Until they couldn’t. 

Women are told when they sign up that there’s a one in three chance they’ll be sexually assaulted. Statically it should have been her _or_ Nadia. 

They handled the situations differently. Nadia drank on the bad days, throwing bottles onto canvases and screaming until she was hoarse. 

Lauren felt it weigh on her as bad karma, accepted it as punishment and moved forward. She’d clean the glass from Nadia’s wounds and they’d hold each other while watching plants grow on television. 

She’d never felt stripped, helpless. Never desired to scrub herself clean. If anything, it propelled her forward. She kept busy, moving and didn’t accept ‘good enough’. Knowledge grew inside of her, screaming back at her mother’s voice that tried telling her she was inept at everything. That she would never be her father, her brother. 

And she wouldn’t. Her mother’s words may have hung over her like a noose, but it was her own hands that cut it from her, that split the fibers as she reached for scholarships and grants just so she stick the papers and awards into her mother’s ashen face and prove she won. She valued the day she’d win a Nobel Prize and stand grinning with her wife’s face smiling back. 

Under Nadia’s hands, she thrived. The woman knew how to write for scholarships and grants better than she did. Her mouth, too, knew how to speak, what to say. She cut the fumbling, stopped the rambles in her speeches, but never tried to change _her_. 

She taught built and moulded Lauren to be _Lauren_ , standing away from Karen. Under her touch, her laughter and love, Lauren felt the ability and drive blossom inside of her, different to how her brother had manipulated her. 

This power, that Nadia tendered, belonged to _her_. It wasn’t forced to a specific shape, there was no words telling her she was wrong, just a simple, soft, “I’m not sure about that.” Before, “But if that’s what you want, I’ll stand by you.” 

And she did. 

When the letter came, the grant confirmed, they both went to the Congo. Strengthened beneath her wife to-be, only haunted on days that swam with triggers and the sound of explosions, Lauren felt herself become empowered, believed that power was within her, Nadia, everyone once more as it had been when she was young. 

But also, in seeing herself survive war, she knew that power was only as strong as the person. So she made herself strong, made her self smart, organized, and focused her efforts on one task at a time to show her true ability. 

Losing Nadia wasn’t like the rug being pulled from her. It was like someone had doused her with sodium hydroxide. Everything burned with rage bubbling from her pores and enflaming her skin. 

The Ash had neutralized the burn. Offered her the means to helping Nadia, but nothing was so simple. 

With the army, training required absolute obedience to her superior officers. It was easy, at first, to step into line, allow herself to become the necessary soldier again as she was given books and information, knowledge only few were privy to. She was distracted by the knowledge, bedazzled by things fifty years beyond current (human) science. 

But the gift, like power, came with a price. She was human, lesser to the extent that with the Light, fae would turn blind or deaf, or even cringe from her touch. She was viewed as contamination, visually and verbally stripped of her humanity. 

Knowledge was not power. Power was power and the Ash held it. 

In times, when Lauren’s resolve snapped: the anger for Nadia, for her parents, from days where she could feel ghosts of the dead-eleven clawing at her skin, all built up until she screamed or fought or just said “No”. They were the days where she learnt ‘truths’. 

The coldest day was learning that No was no longer part of her vocabulary. She was not allowed to say no. Ever. To anyone, least of all the Ash. 

She learnt very quickly to say yes. 

In turn, she was treated her with respect. As though such respect was a privilege, and for a long while it was. 

She bit and clawed and fought her way to the top of the medical field to _earn_ that respect. She did things that she’d never admit to, least of all to Nadia. Even in her comatose state, Lauren would swallow back the words. It wasn’t a lie if she didn’t say them. 

Then Bo appeared. So quickly, quietly, Lauren didn’t even realize it was happening until one day the pendant snapped from around her neck and Bo told her, swore to her, that she wasn’t property. She showered with respect, kindness and love _._ Showing her that these things weren’t privileges that only the top student, child or pet earned. 

She’d forgotten in the five years, that it was something given, like innocence, until proven you were’t worthy. 

But not all people see it as such. 

Power too, felt like innocence. It felt like something all people began with, but as we grow into our environments, some are shown to hold more simply because they fit a particular profile. Others have to grasp for it, have to strive and prove they’re equality, but when they do, they make it easier for the next person, and the next. 

Bo paved her a way. Lit with lamplights and encouragement, never believing that even in her worst moments, that Lauren wasn’t a person deserving of love. 

Even when Lauren loved her and Bo clung to anger, there was something there. Something urging Lauren to try, to prove that her own misguidance didn’t mean that Bo was wrong about her. She felt herself become strong, resilient to her own submission as a force – a _need –_ thrusted her into who she was before enslaved by the fae. 

Lauren was not physically strong. She was not a sharp or blunt weapon. But she built shields for herself and became the fire that fueled and forged weapons. 

She waited and learned. She watched, she planned, and re-planned until she had devised a means to execute her power and prove to all that she wasn’t the weak, fragile human who was so easily beaten like a dog into obedience. 

Then, she rose with purpose and struck. At first with Taft, then with the Morrígan. Both ideals failing because of her own hubris. She’d become drunk on her own power, believing that she was as strong as Bo believed her to be, that her own morals had slipped from her. 

At first she’d been disgusted by Taft, than, as her situation worsened, as she realized that she was done running, done being afraid, she became him and was left standing like a Nazi doctor, experimenting on those she viewed lesser than her own status. 

Fae were not capable of more evil than humans, and humans were not capable of more good than fae. 

Staring at Evony, knowing that she had stripped her as the Ash had stripped herself, Lauren realized her mistake. Realized what power was. 

Power wasn’t politics, wasn’t war or resistance. It wasn’t even a body of people. Power was intangible, a belief that swayed opinion here and there, but no one person _held_ power over another unless they both believed it. She believed she had beaten Evony, the fae. The truth was, as Evony looked up at her. 

Somehow, she’d won. 


End file.
